According to the Arabic TV station Al Jazeera, soldiers have stormed the media company’s offices in the occupied West Bank and temporarily closed them. Heavily armed and masked Israeli soldiers entered the building early in the morning, ordered staff to leave, confiscated technical equipment and imposed a 45-day closure, they said. They did not give a reason for this decision.
The Israeli government had already used an emergency law in May to ban the station from operating in Israel. Before that, the office in Jerusalem was also searched. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had described the Arabic station as a “mouthpiece” of the Islamist Hamas, which had damaged Israel’s security.
Al Jazeera had rejected the allegations and called it a “criminal act.” The Palestinian Journalists’ Association also strongly condemned the temporary closure of the office in Ramallah. Israel’s order was arbitrary and restricted journalistic work that exposed crimes against the Palestinian people, it said in a statement.